Freedom of thought at stake

Last month, the Association of University Teachers declared a boycott on the University of Haifa, Israel's most pluralistic institution of higher education and one of the major academic platforms for peace and conflict resolution in the region. We reflect the new shape of Israeli society: 20% of our students are Arab citizens of the state of Israel, while another quarter are recent immigrants from the former Soviet Union, Ethiopia and Latin America. More than 65% of our students are women. We are not a bastion of privilege: many of our students come from modest economic backgrounds, many of them the first members of their families to seek higher education. This ethnic, religious and class diversity is not a mere accident of history: it is consciously enabled and cultivated by the university, which has, since its establishment, committed itself to providing a space of intellectual dialogue, respect for differences, and coexistence. Indeed, like the city of Haifa, where Jewish and Arab residents have always lived together in harmony, the university has often been labelled "an island of coexistence". In our troubled, tense, and strife-torn region, this is no mean achievement.

Needless to say, life on our campus is not free of tensions. Living and working as we do in the midst of national, ideological and political conflicts, we naturally have our share of heated debates, conflicts and even occasional crises. But we believe that these cultural and political challenges for which our university serves as an arena may actually produce a genuine platform for dialogue and foster a common pursuit of knowledge.

Why, then, were we singled out by the AUT for an unprecedented boycott? I would argue that we were awarded this crown of thorns precisely because we represent the most positive aspects of Israeli society. Our accomplishments in Jewish-Arab reconciliation and inter-faith dialogue are anathema to a small group of well-organised campaigners who seek to delegitimise the state of Israel through the vilification of its success stories. Such smear campaigns are not new to us, but we were taken by surprise when the AUT council cavalierly passed the boycott motion without requesting our response, and without allowing our position to be presented by members of the AUT who are familiar with the facts. In contradistinction to the British sense of fair play, we were denied due process and assumed guilty until proved otherwise.

In fact, none of the specific accusations against us stand up. The AUT resolution is based on our alleged violation of academic freedom, in particular the charge that we sought to defrock one of our lecturers who dared defy the Zionist narrative of the past.

The intellectual community at the University of Haifa is diverse and runs the entire gamut from left to right. An important group of scholars are critical "new historians". With one notable exception, they have had the integrity to seek to persuade through reasoned arguments.

Of course, in the larger context, facts are not a prime consideration. The AUT case is driven by a strong ideological current sweeping through academia. The attack on the University of Haifa was preceded by other boycott initiatives in Europe and the United States, which resulted in gross violations of academic freedom, such as the firing of two members of the editorial board of a scientific journal, solely because they worked for Israeli universities. It is certainly noteworthy that one of these boycotted lecturers is a peace activist and a former chairperson of Amnesty Israel.

The current drive at the AUT is a prime example of the subordination of academic freedom to some rather unpleasant ideological dictates. Let us take for example the reasoning of Mona Baker and Lawrence Davidson, two prominent supporters of the AUT boycott, who argue that Israeli universities should be singled out for sanctions "because Zionist influence [that is, Israeli influence] spreads far beyond its own immediate area of dominion, and now widely influences many key domestic agendas in the west ... Unlike the Chinese, Russians and other oppressive regimes, the Israelis and their supporters directly influence the policy-makers of our own countries." In other words, the boycott of a small Israeli university where Jews and Arabs study and work side by side represents a courageous blow against some kind of imaginary international monster, whose tentacles reach out into the heart of the western world. I leave it to readers to decide what type of mindset lurks behind such prose.

The ultimate casualty of politically motivated attacks on the academic activities of our scholars is academic freedom itself, as well as the universal principle that is the mainstay of all scholarly pursuit: non-discrimination against any person by reason of social origin, gender, race, religion, nationality or political views. The boycott, as part of a larger campaign to ostracise Israel's academia, exemplifies the very faults it purports to condemn. I would ask fair-minded members of the AUT to take a stand against this unprincipled attempt to discriminate against Israeli academics on non-academic grounds.